Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4332564" data-attributes="member: 47776">Antiquities and art aren't tools, they're luxuries.  Magic items aren't just the tools by which adventurers earn their bread, they are the tools by which they avoid death.A better metaphor would be precision machine tools.  A lathe that can produce intricate aircraft parts down to hundredths of a millimeter is worth six figures, if you have a need for that kind of aircraft part.  If you don't, then it's a metal lathe with neat features, and easily only worth 20% of its value, if that.The problem breaks down when you try to wonder how that particular lathe came into existence.  If there were only one airline assembly line, then that lathe is worth full value to that line, and much less to anyone else.  But if that lathe only had its full value to that one airline industry, then no one but that industry should be making said lathes.  Either there are other adventurers around, which means that there is a secondary market for enchanted items, or there aren't, at which point the items shouldn't be being made in the first place.Really, though, the root problem here is that we're performing the functional equivalent of wondering how quickly the magical gnomes at the top of the Tetris screen can put together a L-shape versus a square.  Just as the game of Tetris does not expect you to speculate on items outside of the game's scope, so does D&D4E.When I play Dawn of War, I don't wonder why it's necessary to use a commander unit to call in orbital strikes.  I don't wonder why I need requisition to build units, or why I can't order my scouts to raid the armory and steal Terminator armor since I can't get to that goddamned Relic without it (and can't build Terminator armor without taking the Relic, of course).  When I play an RTS, these questions are out of scope.When I play an RPG, they aren't.  When I play Lord of the Rings RPG, I want the option to play plucky heroes fighting a desperate battle against a vastly superior force, only ultimately destroying the Ring through.  I also want the option of playing the Council of Istari, united under our fearless and devoted leader Saruman the White and pushing back the Shadow with the power of Anor.I want the option of going on an epic quest for Thorondor, gaining his alliance, and sending in a flight of Manwe's eagles bearing a White Wizard to challenge the Nazgul on their fell beasts, fighting an epic aerial battle, summoning the last of our reserves, and choosing to resist the call of the Ring and plummet into the Cracks while bearing it.I want the option of bringing knowledge of the Valar to the heathen lands to the south and east.  I want to touch off a religious revolution in the lands that were once Sauron's breadbasket, and watch as his dark military machine turns on itself, for hunger drives orcs more harshly than fear.  I want to have rules for how Orcs differ from Men, so that it can be easily determined how long orcs can remain in fighting trim in a starvation situation, and I want to have a good idea of what kind of dark miracles Sauron has a chance of pulling out as stopgap measures before he can whip up evil grain to grow in Mordor.I want the option of going into the dark places of the world, and making alliances with the creatures found there, until when the moment comes when I do claim the ring for my own, half of Sauron's army immediately turns on the other half, and the doomed forces of light make their suicidal charge, paving the way for my hand-picked forces to sweep in afterwords and pick up the pieces.Finally, I want the option (however theoretical) of playing in Middle-Earth as a Valar who has decided that Morgoth had the right general idea after all, walking up to Sauron, poking him in the eye, and then crushing the ring in one hand while he's reeling.To sum up all of that, I want a world that works.  I want to know that when I interact with an element in the world, I can do more with it than is immediately obvious, and that the result of my idea might move the world, the story, and the game into a place the GM had not explicitly considered (without irreparably damaging any of the three).  A system that declares elements in the world to exist only as far as their initially-assigned role is not an RPG in which I find interest.  I do not expect perfection, nor even that every rule work in every situation.  I do care that the system is well-designed enough that when I take an action or optimize along an axis not explicitly considered by the designers, the game not explode into unplayability.</blockquote>

Verification